ABIGAIL HOPKINS — Stardust Of Unknown Origin

Abigail Hopkins is set to release her awe-inspiring single Stardust Of Unknown Origin on April 18th 2025. It's the second single drawn from her brilliant and compelling forthcoming album Stardust.

Abigail Hopkins takes up the story behind Stardust Of Unknown Origin:

‘I love the Simon Barnes books Rewild Yourself and The Sacred Combe. They’re about how we’ve lost touch with nature and the wild, untamed part of ourselves. I also love Professor Brian Cox’s book Human Universe which asks questions about why we’re here, what is our meaning, how did the universe come to be? He sums up by saying we come from the dust of dying stars. The story of the universe is our story and it’s in us and around us all the time!

When I was a little girl, I used to ask the grownups the big life questions, such as Why are we here? What does it mean? If there was nothing in the universe, would time exist? I daresay I was precocious at times, because I remember getting incredibly upset when the adults couldn’t answer my questions! Jump forward to when I was diagnosed with bowel cancer and forced to face my possible death. I found myself asking the same questions, only this time, I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I had been, as that little kid.

Instead, cancer has forced me to take a good long hard look at my deep-seated fears, sorrows, angers, insecurities and everything else including my fear of dying. And I have discovered that acknowledging and embracing my vulnerability, my tiny-ness in the vastness of everything, gave me the inner strength and calmness I needed to get through the illness and to heal. That’s how the name Tiny Fragile Records came about. Now, for me just being here is enough. I don’t want to look for miracles beyond or in the future, they can be here now, 13.7 billion years since the beginning.

Out of all of these thoughts, and feelings and questions, my own sonic cosmos, the Stardust album, was born. I feel incredibly grateful that I’ve so far pulled through with my tiny fragile (stardust) body, and was able to make music to share with you, just by vibrating guitar strings, my vocal cords, and via a bit of magical technology. So, the theme of my album Stardust is that we’re all recycled bits of stars, making music, laughing, crying, rejoicing, hurting, loving, being born, dying and everything else we go through.

The song Stardust of Unknown Origin is the central track that holds the rest of the album together. It came out of what? – who knows? - perhaps something eternal and mysterious, and when I die, that’s where I’ll go back to, stardust. I find that comforting, no longer distressing or terrifying. Stardust of Unknown Origin is about connectedness and unity, about coming to terms with returning to the infinite unknown and re-discovering the oneness of it all.

With Stardust of Unknown Origin, I added a drum track and there are four guitar parts. The lead is my old Spanish guitar, set as a loop, and then I’ve added some dissonant chords with my twelve-string guitar, another layer of the Spanish six-string, and an electric guitar. I also laid down 32 vocal harmonies for the final chorus. I love using reverb and vintage EQs. My production style with the Stardust album is worn old strings, strange combinations of cello bits, some harmonica, the use of a very old Alesis QS7 synth I bought in America, and also a two-octave mini-keyboard.

What I love about making music is that a song or a composition really does start from an intangible space. I don’t need to have a complete, finished track in my mind, before I record, but I do need to be able to play and sing the song with my guitar. Once I’ve mastered that, then I’ll experiment with adding layers. So I might think, “Oh I wonder what that would sound like if I added a bit of something there? Let’s try it and see what happens!” It’s a matter of letting the inspiration do what it will and getting out of my own way. A song will come to be, with a bit of patience, perseverance, and by allowing it to breathe and take me where it will. So, in a sense, I’m writing the song, but then the song is also writing itself, and maybe the song’s writing me? Songs and films, any piece of creative work, certainly get their own pair of legs when you put them out into the world and they create new stories of their own. Isn’t that what we and the universe are doing all the time?’

For more info and to hear the album please visit...

ABIGAIL HOPKINS — Stardust

Stardust by Abigail Hopkins is an utterly compelling work of music, of sounds, of voice, of words, spellbinding and mysterious. The album brims...

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Abigail Hopkins Release Details

• From the album Stardust - digital album release due April 4th 2025
• Album release on CD - due June 6th 2025
• Storm - single/video out now
• Stardust Of Unknown Origin - single due April 18th 2025
• Label: Tiny Fragile Records

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